Sit­u­at­ed at the con­flu­ence of the Vol­ga and Kotorosl Rivers some 250 km north-east of Moscow, the his­toric city of Yaroslavl devel­oped into a major com­mer­cial cen­tre from the 11th cen­tu­ry. It is renowned for its numer­ous 17th-cen­­tu­ry church­es and is an out­stand­ing exam­ple of the urban plan­ning reform Empress Cather­ine the Great ordered for the whole of Rus­sia in 1763. While keep­ing some of its sig­nif­i­cant his­toric struc­tures, the town was ren­o­vat­ed in the neo­clas­si­cal style on a radi­al urban mas­ter plan. It has also kept ele­ments from the 16th cen­tu­ry in the Spassky Monastery, one of the old­est in the Upper Vol­ga region, built on the site of a pagan tem­ple in the late 12th cen­tu­ry but recon­struct­ed over time.